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Home / What Happens if You Feed Baby Turkeys Baby Chicken Food

What Happens if You Feed Baby Turkeys Baby Chicken Food

Oh, a baby turkey is on your horizon! But what does it take to heighten them to maturity? It can't exist that difficult, correct? But there are a few very, very important tidbits of data that are needed to raise them successfully. Hither they are…

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Baby turkey in hands of child. How to raise turkey poults

Baby Turkey: How to Heighten Baby Turkeys

Accept a seat. Permit's sit a spell and talk turkey together. I'm going to assume you aren't a turkey, or a lilliputian naive and a dud, and are willing to take some fourth dimension to acquire all you can well-nigh the babe turkey. 😉

Possibly you oasis't idea about raising turkeys before, just has the fourth dimension come to add a little diverseness to your flock? Chickens are the gateway fowl and can provide eggs, meat, and such special companionship.

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You can notice a lot of manufactures here on A Life of Heritage that volition teach you lot a lot almost poultry and be sure to check outCHICKEN RICH: Profitable Poultry Parcel–Information technology'due south Full of to-exercise lists, checklists, record keeping sheets, and resources pages that will keep your flock healthy and YOU organized!

Just what tin can turkeys offering? Although their eggs aren't a common breakfast dish, they provide a hateful turkey dinner at Thanksgiving.

Set up to swoop into some turkey talk?

Kickoff of all…

What exercise you call a infant turkey?

A baby turkey is called a poult. A turkey poult is a young turkey that is less than iv weeks old. During this fourth dimension, the turkey poult relies on its mother for protection and guidance.

Now that you lot know the name of a infant turkey, here are the names of grown turkeys:

  • Male Turkey: TOM or GOBBLER
  • Female Turkey: HEN
  • Baby Turkey: POULT or CHICK
  • Immature Male person Turkey: JAKE
  • Young Female person Turkey: JENNY
  • Group of Wild Turkeys: FLOCK
  • Grouping of Domesticated Turkeys: RAFTER

Turkey Egg Facts and Hatching Turkey Eggs

For some, it may be a no-turkey-brainer, but it is of import to notation that turkeys do not requite nativity as a mammal does. It lays an egg in the same manner as a chicken. And life in the egg simply begins and continues if it is given the proper, consistent temperature and humidity for 28 days.

close up of a turkey's head

Buying Turkey Poults

Where are baby turkeys for sale?

Besides finding a local source of turkey chicks, the most common places are these online sources:

Porter's Rare Heritage Turkeys

Hoover's Hatchery

Chortle Hatchery

Stromberg'southward Chickens

Ideal Poultry

Privett Hatchery

Meyer Hatchery

Murray Mcmurray

Welp Hatchery

If y'all decide to enhance turkeys every year, keep track of where you got them and all the details of your experience with that particular hatchery. If you weren't completely satisfied, cross them off your list until you lot find one that delivers exactly what yous desire!

Supplies and Equipment You lot Will Need for Turkey Poults

  • Brooder – Examples of what could be used:
    • Dog Crate
    • Paper-thin Box (Line with plastic!)
    • Large Rubbermaid Tote
    • Spare Bathtub
  • Heat Lamp
  • Thermometer
  • Shallow basin for food
  • Shallow bowl for water
  • Appropriate bedding
  • Poult feed

Setting Upwardly the Brooder for Turkey Poults

The brooder should be set up to requite the turkey poults adequate heat (especially heat!) food, water, and bedding.

After you've chosen what y'all will use for a brooder, the rut lamp will demand to be placed very securely. Information technology is best to take the area heated up to the proper temperature before placing the poults in. The thermometer, as well every bit watching their behavior, will tell you if the temperature is acceptable and if it needs to be adjusted.

Whatever spills should be cleaned upwardly immediately. It's important to keep it equally dry as *possible*. The warmth and wetness tin become a hazardous case of mold, mildew, and bacteria.

An unused bathtub is a great way for the h2o to drain out later spills but if that isn't a possibility, and so putting the h2o dish in some other larger, shallow pan may help contain the spills from getting the bedding and nutrient all wet.

Pino shavings, crushed corn cobs, or straw are cracking options to use for beddings.

Tips for Setting Up a Turkey Brooder:

  • Later on three weeks, sand can be used for bedding. This is a bang-up way to proceed their brooder dry and tin be cleaned like cat litter.
  • For the outset 5 days, cover the bedding with burlap or cloth to prevent the poults from eating the bedding. After they are proficient at eating their feed from the feeders, the cover can be removed.
  • Place colored, shiny marbles in their food and water. This will attract their attention to their sources of food and h2o and help them rapidly get accustomed to eating and drinking.

Preparing Turkeys for the Brooder

Before the poults are placed in the brooder they need to be inspected carefully to note whatsoever abnormalities, sickness, or weaknesses. When the poults are placed in the brooder their beaks demand to be dipped in the water and monitored carefully to brand sure that they are drinking and eating adequately.

Watching the chick's beliefs and deportment will exist an important function of raising the immature poults.

White turkey in a rafter of turkeys

Oestrus Requirements for Turkey Poults

The temperature in the brooder should exist set to 95°-98°F before the turkeys are placed in the brooder. Turkey's are rut-loving little birds. Then lookout their behavior in the brooder closely. If they are huddled under the light, they are cold. If they are hugging the side of the brooder, information technology is too hot. If they are wandering around evenly nether the light, they are but right.

The temperature can be lowered v°F (by raising the estrus lamp) every week until the brooder is at the same temperature as the outside temperature. Practice not let the baby turkeys get damp or chilled. Permit for adequate airflow merely not drafts within the brooder.

Space Requirments for Turkey Poults

There are proper space requirements that need to be adhered to carefully. Given the proper space, the young birds volition remain healthy. Lack of space promotes health issues and illness.

These are the space requirements needed for the different stages of growth:

  • 0-4 Weeks: 1.25 Square Feet Per Bird
  • v-xvi Weeks: 2.5 Square Feed Per Bird
  • 16-29 Weeks: 4 Foursquare Feed Per Bird
  • Turkey Breeder: 5 Foursquare Feed Per Bird

Programme ahead. Many hatcheries have a minimum gild of poults, so yous will demand to plan for that many growing turkeys. When you are setting upwardly your brooder, make sure y'all've given the poults adequate space to exist salubrious and abound. If they aren't given the space they demand, they have a much higher potential of getting ill, not getting enough food, and pecking at each other.

Turkey Poult Issues and Wellness Issues

There is zippo more frustrating than the strong pushing out the weak. On a daily basis, I scout this happen with our horses, cows, goats, pigs, and chickens and nothing makes me feel crazier. Poults are known to "starve out" the weaker chicks past pushing them away from the food and water. So a immature poult tin can actually starve fifty-fifty with food available.

Once more, during the first weeks, it will exist so important to find advisedly what is happening in the brooder and act speedily if this is happening to prevent whatever sickness or dead birds.

Some other area to continue an eye on is your young chick's posteriors. Any sign of diarrhea or vent pasting, where poop sticks to their butts, tin can really block passing poop. It can exist a serious trouble and needs to exist fixed rapidly.

If you see these problems you need to chop-chop do these things:

  • Up the Temperature. Check the brooder temperature and make sure it is hot plenty.
  • Remove any pasty butt. Soak the surface area with a warm rag or newspaper towel to soften the poop, and advisedly pick off and remove the dried debris.
  • Sprinkle chick grit on their feed.

Growing is a hard job for trivial chicks, assistance them during this time by keeping them warm, dry, and give them the proper feed, to aid in proper digestion and emptying.

Three diseases to watch for as your turkey poults grow are coccidiosis, blackhead, and airsacculitis.

Keeping your turkeys and chickens separated volition help in the prevention of a blackhead outbreak and although a personal conclusion, feeding medicated feed to your young turkeys will help with coccidiosis, along with clean germ-free practices. Buying turkeys from breeders who exam for airsacculitis is also the first step in prevention for that.

Feather picking tin be a bad habit for a turkey to start and a hard habit for them to break. Here are a few reasons and solutions equally to why your poults may be picking at the growing blood quills:

  • Rut likewise Hot. Solution: Lower heat
  • Lack of Nutrition and Poly peptide. Solution: Give proper nutrition
  • Light to Bright. Solution: Reduce calorie-free (lower the wattage or use a red-colored bulb)
  • Space besides Minor. Solution: Increment brooder infinite
  • Bored. Solution: Give leafy greens or marbles or something to pick at.
  • Broad Solution: Free-range older birds when appropriate

Feed pellets for turkeys

Feeding Turkey Poults: What Does a Infant Turkey Eat?

Turkey poults are much like game birds in that they need much higher poly peptide levels to assistance in their proper growth.

Considering of this higher protein demand, feed a wild game bird feed or poultry starter specifically made for turkeys. This will be admittedly necessary for the first 8 or so weeks.

Hither's what your feeding programme may look like:

  • one-eight weeks: feed a starter with 28% protein
  • 3 weeks: begin to sprinkle their feed with chick grit
  • 8 weeks to 6 months:  24-26% crumbled protein turkey grower/developer
  • six months+: 16% – eighteen% layer pellets, crumbles, or mash.
  • Adult laying hens only: Offering complimentary-selection calcium and grit. The toms volition benefit from the grit as well.

Remember that feeding greens, garden trimmings, staff of life, and scratch are peachy for treats. Only should be limited. Feeding turkeys "snacks" would be like feeding my kids a ton of junk food all day. They would fill and not swallow their nutritious meals and non reach optimal health.

If you lot are raising wide-breasted varieties, which are usually used only for meat, they will only be raised to about 16-20 weeks of age.

The heritage turkeys volition accept nearly 6-viii months earlier they are fully grown to exist at a proper eating size.

What Non to Feed Turkey Poults

Equally always, at that place are a few items to keep in mind to Not feed your young turkeys. Here's the listing and why they shouldn't be fed:

  • Oyster shells and other forms of calcium. Calcium at high levels is toxic to poults and tin can crusade liver, bone, and kidney problems (and even death!)
  • Chicken layer pellets and breeder mash. Calcium levels are too high. See the notes above.
  • Avocados, potato peels, rhubarb leaves. These items are toxic or can be toxic with too much consumption.
  • Scratch. Don't feed scratch before 8 weeks of age and again, in express amounts.

Exist mindful of what you put in the brooder with your turkey poults. You don't want to end up with sick or dead chicks only because of a lapse of memory.

How to Raise Friendly Turkey Poults

It is possible to raise friendly turkeys. There is no magical answer though. It will only take some down-to-globe-adept-and-honest time and effort starting from day one.

And information technology will revolve around you feeding the baby turkeys out of your hand as often as possible. You will want them to associate y'all with nutrient, which is a not bad style of reinforcing to them that you are condom and practiced things happen when they are effectually you. Agree them as often as possible while they are little. After they are fully grown, property them won't be an option but if raised with lots of dear and feedings out of the hand, they volition be willing and comfortable to come up and look for a treat from you.

If at whatever point earlier they are fully grown, in that location is a crude spot and they begin to deed frightened of you lot, don't get discouraged. Go on feeding them and holding them as ofttimes equally possible. Go on at information technology! It will be worth the endeavour.

Two white turkeys sitting on a fence

When to Add a Roost for Turkey Poults

Turkeys beloved to roost only like chickens do. Just they will prefer a roost that is something like a two'x6′ laying apartment on its side. They similar a flat roost that a board on its side tin can give.

And a roost can be fabricated bachelor at about four weeks of age and each young bird will demand near 6 inches of roost space. When they are grown, the roosting space needs to increase to 24 inches per bird.

But take annotation that broad-breasted varieties do not need and should not be given roosts merely should be given 3-4 inches of bedding.

Preparing Turkey Poults for Outside Living and When They Can Go Outside

Like all young birds, turkeys are very prone to becoming chilled before their feathers are fully in. Before full-fourth dimension-regular-outdoor-living, they need to be fully feathered and acclimated to the temperatures. This will be after 8 weeks of age and of course inside reason.

If the temperatures exterior are non suitable for young birds, postponing their outdoor adventures may be wise.  And even then, if the temperatures are still chilly, providing a heat lamp to keep them warm at night will be important in keeping them warm and dry.

For further feeding or to merely check the facts, these have been helpful resource: Raising Turkeys, Brooding Turkey Chicks, Turkey Article, Care and Feeding,

What Happens if You Feed Baby Turkeys Baby Chicken Food

Source: https://alifeofheritage.com/farm-living/baby-turkey/